File:Media, Babylon and Persia - including a study of the Zend-Avesta or religion of Zoroaster, from the fall of Nineveh to the Persian war (1889) (14781109235).jpg

Identifier: mediababylonpers00ragouoft (find matches)
Title: Media, Babylon and Persia : including a study of the Zend-Avesta or religion of Zoroaster, from the fall of Nineveh to the Persian war
Year: 1889 (1880s)
Authors: Ragozin, Zénaïde A. (Zénaïde Alexeïevna), 1835-1924
Subjects: Zoroastrianism Iran -- History Babylon (Extinct city) -- History
Publisher: London : T. Fisher Unwin New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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humous distinctions,the custom is also entitled to respect. II. The attempt to carry out the exaggeratednotion of the purity of the elements and the impur-ity of death with the most rigorous consistency,involves the priestly lawgivers in endless contradic-tions, places them in the most puzzling predicaments.They become conscious that so many occasions ofpollution arise which are wholly beyond their con-trol, that existence threatens to become impossible,unless they draw the line somewhere on this side ofwhat may be termed the reduction ad abstirdiivi oftheir doctrines. This they do in the form of an extrarevelation, contained in a special chapter of theVendidad (Fargard V.), wherein Zarathushtra is made * Thus also the stretcher on which the dead arc carried must Ijcof iron. Metal is supposed to retain infection less than any othersubstance. According to the laws of purification a tainted vessel ofmetal can be cleansed, while one of wood cannot, Init remains un-clean forever and ever.
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W W H < o o CI 130 MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA. to propound nice and puzzling points, in the form ofhypothetical cases, for Ahura-Mazda to solve. Wcgive the first part of this curious dialogue whole, asa si)ccinun : There dies a man in tlic depths of the vale : a hird takes (lightfrom tlie top of the mountain down into the depths of the vale, andit cats up tiic corpse of the dead man there ; tlien up it flies from thedepths of the vale to the toji of the mountain, it flies to some one ofthe trees there, of the hard-wooded or the soft-wooded, and uponthat tree it vomits, it deposits dung, it drops pieces of the corpse. Now, lo ! here is a man coming up from the depths of the vale tothe top of the mountain ; he comes to the tree whereon the bird issitting, from that tree he wants to have wood for the fire. He fellsthe tree, he hews the tree, he splits it into logs, and then he lights iton the fire, the son of Ahura-Mazda. What is the penalty that heshall pay ? Ahura-Mazda answered: Th

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